State Government Category Posts

Note: Paul Epland is a summer intern and research assistant from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Paul hails from Wayzata High School in Plymouth, Minnesota. His interests include journalism, state and local politics, comparative literature, and wild (some would say dangerous) speculation regarding Game of Thrones. Paul's internship is funded by a grant from Paul and Rhonda Redleaf of the Redleaf Foundation.
“P... Read More

Note from G&J: Guest Blogger John James is a former commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Revenue and one of our state's more knowledgeable tax experts. G&J does not necessarily support all of the tax policy proposals advanced here, but we think it's an insightful analysis and a plausible argument.
Widespread recognition that Minnesota needs transportation infrastructure investment guarantees another legislative effort t... Read More

Political humorist Mark Shields has said that a week can be a lifetime in politics and three months can be an eternity. How true for Obamacare and MNSure…
About two eternities (six months) ago, things were not looking good for the Affordable Care Act. The much decried audition of the www.healthcare.gov website emboldened opponents of the Affordable Care Act to declare victory, asserting that the website’s failure had sealed the fai... Read More

The roll-out of Healthcare.gov, the federal online marketplace to purchase insurance under Obamacare, has been beleaguered and ridiculed, to say the least. The media and talk-show hosts have had a field day, and of course the “botched roll out” has been the target of unrelenting criticism from Congressional Republicans. On November 14th, House Speaker John Boehner declared, “The only way to fully pr... Read More

In previous blogs, I wrote about the University of Minnesota and its history of an expectation of transparency and a framework of accountability. In Minnesota, the University follows the same public access to information laws as other government entities, namely the Data Practices Act and the Open Meeting Law, and has had an expectation of accountability to the State Legislature ever since its founding in 1851. That’s 162 years to practice ... Read More